So, I was leaping from rooftop to rooftop with my trusty ninja-sword at my side, and I noticed a fellow ninja was already covered in blood from his last kill. Naturally, since it was only 12am and we had only been under the cover of darkness (the only time ninjas work) for a short amount of time, I had wondered how he had procured work so quickly.

Life as a freelance ninja isn’t easy.  You start out each night looking for work, and you may not even find it. In fact, it’s particularly hard to find work as a professional assassin of the night in the modern world. So, naturally, I had to find a way to discredit my competition without making myself seem like a complete tool. Or I could just kill him, but that’s a little too messy, and I might break a nail.

What’s a good way of discrediting your competition without directly insulting them (which is, oddly enough, against the ToS of oDesk)? By using the wonderful language of Business BS, you too can say the other guys applying for the job are worthless hacks. The key is to not name anyone specifically, but to generally refer to them in general. For example, “they,” “them,” “those guys,” etc et al ad nasium.

However, pointing out a certain person such as “Dave” (not to say he is) and pointing out that he’s too old, beardy, Microsoft-fixated, and beardy for a job is clearly in poor taste. When competing with other providers who have equal or better oDesk (or any service) stats than you, you want to leave the other providers where they are at and raise yourself above them in the eyes of the buyer. In reality, you’re not knocking the competition, but relatively, they are a in a demoted position compared to you.

As for me and writing copy, I try to work in that I don’t use the usual “Marketing BS” such as BUY NOW! GET A FREE BLAH BLAH BLAH AND 50% OFF IF YOU BUY NOW!!11eleventy! Along with that, I don’t use spastic colors for my text or center-aligned text because it looks trashy. The modern consumer can see straight through these “power words” and “call to action” phrases because they’ve seen them on every other crappy, thrown together website on the net. I’ve spoken to potential clients who want this junk, and I’ve flat-out refused because I won’t soil my hands with work that’s going to ruin my reputation as a quality writer.

That’s precisely what you should stress: quality. If someone is paying you any decent amount of money, they want you to produce something they couldn’t have produced themselves, so you need to know what works. If you can mention specific poor practices that your fellow providers (in general) shill out, then you can state why those practices don’t work and how your method works so much better. Chances are, the buyer is going to be much more in the dark on the nuances of your craft than you are (because that’s why they’re hiring you).

So, really, you’re knocking the competition in general by bringing to light the widespread poor practices, but you’re using it as a platform to state that you can do a much better job than the rest due to your better practices. It’s not the absolute nicest thing to do, but it’s a great survival tactic. If you really believe that you are the best candidate for the job, then you really should show that to the buyer in your cover-letter.

So, fire out those applications and make each one count. Don’t get upset if your old tactics for applying to jobs aren’t working–change them! Give the buyer very specific information (as far as you can) on why you’re the best person for the job compared to the rest. For those of you in the know, all of this information can be summarized by the concept of “Less QQ more pew pew.”

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